


Life Less Ordinary

by phyripo



Series: A Thought Away [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Don't Have to Know Sense8 Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 00:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7130762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phyripo/pseuds/phyripo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight people, eight lives entwined. From Canada to Latvia to Liechtenstein to Vietnam. The only thing they shared before was a birthday, and now, they share their consciousness.</p><p>What could possibly go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Less Ordinary

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel to A Thought Away! There are many stories to tell about this group of characters. I don't know which ones I will write down and which I won't, so it won't be an actual story as much as just interconnected oneshots in the same 'verse.  
> I think this makes very little sense without having read A Thought Away, although if you know Sense8 canon I think it should make it clear enough to understand without having read it! So it's one of the two! ;)
> 
> The plan was - still is, really - to make this more lighthearted than A Thought Away, which already wasn't very heavy...... But then Latvia happened. I guess it'll be a surprise even to me how it turns out! Tags will be updated as needed.
> 
> I'll make one of those nice human name lists for your convenience.
> 
> FEATURING  
> Canada - Matthew Williams  
> Kenya - Ajuma Kamaru  
> Latvia - Raivis Gulbis  
> Liechtenstein - Erika Vogel  
> Luxembourg - Noah Krier  
> Moldova - Luca Rotaru  
> South Korea - Im Yong-Soo  
> Vietnam - Pham Vinh

**I.**

His name is Raivis Gulbis, and there isn’t a night he doesn’t dream of being somewhere, someone else. Sometimes, the dreams soothe. Sometimes, they are worse than his reality. Which, Raivis thinks wryly, is quite a feat.

The dreams have changed lately.

He’s still somewhere else, he’s still someone else, but the dreams are… Neutral. Whatever situation he finds himself in at night, it is _possible_. In the past, Raivis has dreamed of terrifying monsters with familiar faces and all-encompassing darkness, but now he dreams about horseback riding and hip-hop dancing and doodling in the margins of university essays.

He’s not sure what to make of it, so he tries to make it stop by drinking more than even he is used to.

One night, he dreams about a young woman in a wheelchair who looks up at him and says, “I don’t think you should be afraid.”

Then she makes him tea, which he drinks in a moonlit living room populated with shadows, while she sits at the window and looks out over the mountains outside.

He wakes up without a headache.

* * *

**II.**

Her name is Ajuma Kamaru, and she is lonely.

Not all the time, of course – she can occupy herself with the mountains of work to be done during the day, and she goes out with friends in the evening, exploring the streets of Nairobi, but sometimes, at night, she finds it hard not to think about her family, who seem light years away now. She calls when she can, but it’s still as busy as ever back home. It’s rare that she’s able to talk with her mother for more than five minutes.

Still, she’s doing this for them as much as for herself. In this city, there are so many more opportunities than in her tiny village. So many more chances at success.

“You got out,” says an unfamiliar Asian woman who Ajuma thinks she might know, but really doesn’t.

“Out of what?” she asks.

The woman shrugs, her expression stoic. “Your birth situation. You sought a better life, and here you are.” She speaks Kiswahili perfectly.

“Not better, per se. Just different.”

“Different,” she repeats. “Wouldn’t that be nice.”

* * *

**III.**

His name is Matthew Williams, and he is confused.

“I’m sorry?”

“German! You were speaking German!”

He shakes his head. “I don’t speak German. You must have misheard, Léonard.”

“I know what I heard!”

Matthew watches his neighbor scuttle around the shelves with a frown. The man’s age must be catching up with him, he guesses, because there is no way he was speaking German. He only speaks two languages, and German isn’t one of them.

This isn’t the first incident, though, and Léonard isn’t the only one who’s been acting strange. First there was the time he was playing hockey with some of the village kids, and a woman in a _sundress_ appeared on the snowy street. Matthew was concerned – understandably so, he thinks – and tried to ask her what she was doing there, but a second later, she was gone, and all the kids keep maintaining they never saw anyone. And just yesterday, an attempt to draw out the sort of fishing rod a costumer would need turned into a full-fledged pen drawing of the most realistic fish Matthew has ever seen. He’s a terrible artist.

Very, very strange.

* * *

**IV.**

Her name is Pham Vinh, and she is absolutely fed up with almost everything that comprises her life.

There are better things she could do than picking tea leaves day in, day out, she knows this. She’s smart. Vinh reads, she watches, she learns. In another life, she could do great things.

The other life might just have started.

She was in Kenya, but she wasn’t in Kenya. Now, she is in South Korea, but she isn’t in South Korea, and there is a man talking to her in perfect Vietnamese. He makes animated gestures with his hands, almost throwing his fancy modern phone across the apartment building lobby with a sweep of an arm. Vinh, despite understanding his language, doesn’t really get what he’s talking about. There are so many words there that she’s missing the proper context for.

And still, it makes sense. Vinh almost smiles.

Another man, as flashy and tired-looking as the one before her now – Yong-Soo, he said his name was – walks over, and asks who Yong-Soo is talking to. He turns, and the next moment Vinh is back in her own little house.

* * *

**V.**

His name is Im Yong-Soo, and he just saw a woman disappear into thin air.

Well, he didn’t exactly _see_ her disappear, but she was there one moment and then the next she wasn’t, like magic. He thinks it might be magic.

“Yong-Soo?”

“I’m— Talking to no one! Just practicing lines.”

“Lines for what?” asks Ju-Hin. “Do we have another commercial no one told me about?”

Yong-Soo thinks fast, and says, “I’m holding a speech at my sister’s wedding.”

“Your sister? I didn’t know you had a sister.”

Thinking fast is not his strongest suit. He has not spoken about, or _to_ , his sister in years. “No, I mean… I was just – talking to this plant. Helps them grow, right?”

Ju-Hin’s eyebrows disappear beneath his messy orange hair. Yong-Soo grins and flounces off. Is he going crazy? Is he hallucinating because he hasn’t slept enough lately? They’ve been working very hard, after all, preparing for their long-awaited comeback.

But first there was the dark-skinned woman his camera didn’t capture, and now this Vietnamese woman whose Korean was exemplary and who went _poof_ like a fairy tale. Yong-Soo can’t let this continue, he would put his whole group in jeopardy if he fucked up this comeback. The management has already made them wait for ages. Best go to sleep early tonight, he thinks.

Yong-Soo dreams that he’s picking leaves from bushes and putting them in giant baskets, and feels miserable.

* * *

**VI.**

Her name is Erika Vogel, and she is curious.

She’s almost always curious about something; it’s kind of a staple of her personality. But now, she has a very particular thing to be curious about. Or, well, more than one thing, but they’re all connected, or at least she thinks so.

So far, she’s worked out it started with the sudden appearance of a woman in her mid-thirties in a blue dress, on the private family property. Her brother Basch said he didn’t see her, and then he turned his most concerned look on Erika, so she quickly dropped it.

She loves Basch, she does, but sometimes she thinks he still sees her as a little helpless girl, despite the fact that she’s twenty-one now and has proven herself more than capable of taking care of her own needs. Her wheelchair has never bothered her, even in the mountains. It’s as much part of her as her eyes or her hair.

Case in point; everything started with that woman.

Then a man, about her own age but looking worn out, in the middle of the kitchen as Erika was getting a midnight snack. She offered him tea and he was so quiet while he drank that she could hear the mug trembling in his fingers.

She’ll find out what’s going on. It’ll be a challenge. Good thing she likes those.

* * *

**VII.**

His name is Noah Krier, and he is no stranger to secrets. He has them, quite some.

This secret, however – this is truly something else. This is the kind of secret that spawns novels.

Noah doesn’t have any writing talent, but if he did, he would write it all down. How he was sure Jacques ran over a woman in the middle of the road, but the chauffeur himself never saw her. How he woke up with a splitting, hangover-like headache despite not having drunk more than one glass of wine the night before. How, the other day, he was singing in what turned out to be Kiswahili. How his fingers cramp sometimes like he’s plucked leaves from trees all day. How he was suddenly doing dance moves instead of brushing his horse’s mane just this morning. How he found himself baking sweets despite knowing he has no time for things like that, and despite never having baked before.

He just keeps it a secret instead, locks it in the metaphorical closet with his other secrets, and enjoys this part of his life that hasn’t been directed by his surname, or, more directly, his mother.

It’s nice to have secrets sometimes.

* * *

**VIII.**

His name is Luca Rotaru, and he is a Sensate.

It takes a day or two before it really sinks in, before he realizes what the strange vision he had of Angélique Clarke – née Verlaque – means. By that time, his world has shifted from place to place, from the familiar streets of Bucharest to snowy mountains to city high-rise and back. He understands now why his brother sometimes seems so out of it. Alin was thrown into the Sensate thing eight years ago, and it set a great deal of things in motion. Luca would be lying if he said he hasn’t been jealous of him sometimes.

It’s a great gift. Still confusing right now, but great.

“So, welcome to the club,” Alin says, when Luca finally gives him a call. “Angélique is insisting I call her stepmom.” 

Luca grins, twisting a pencil into his hair. He didn’t think about it, but since Angélique, who is part of Alin’s Cluster, birthed _his_ Cluster, she is kind of his mom now. 

Alin continues, “But, hey, if you need any advice or something, you know I’m here. I guess you’ll have to explain to everyone else what’s going on, too.”

“Probably. Thanks, Alin.”

“No problem! See you this weekend?”

“Of course!” Luca moved out two years ago, when he was nineteen, but he still lives in Bucharest. Just closer to university, which is fortunate. “See you!”

“Uhm,” says the lanky blond man now sitting primly on Luca’s bed. His impeccably white shirt is a sharp contrast to the colorful mess that Luca calls home.

“Hi!” Luca says excitedly. This is the first time he can talk to someone of his own Cluster. “What’s your name?”

The man tilts his head so his hair falls across one eye. “I am Noah Krier.”

“Nice to meet you, Noah. I’m Luca, and I think we will have a great time together.”


End file.
